What thrifty tips do you NOT recommend?

[ArcheryAnnie]

There's been discussion on other threads about some "thrifty tips" which don't seem all that sensible, like rinsing the sauce off spaghetti hoops to reuse the cooked pasta (wastes sauce and calories), or boiling soap to make shower gel (wastes electricity and soap - better just use the soap bar). What other thrifty tips have you either invented or tried, that you would warn other people off?

Here's mine: people have said a pinch of cheap curry powder helps elevate all kinds of dishes, including baked beans, tinned tomatoes, etc, and helps ring the changes in a monotonous diet. Here's what curry powder doesn't elevate, kids: porridge oats. Many, many years ago (pre DS), desperate for something other than plain porridge made with water, which had formed the bulk of our diet all week, we tried currying the porridge with an onion. Now, if I make or buy terrible food, I'll still usually eat it anyway, and just determine not to buy or cook it again. Not so this: oats, curry power and the onion all wasted. Don't ever repeat my mistake!

@Buythebag petrol is expensive. UK hotels are extortionate. Holiday Lets are expensive. If the weather is crap, indoor leisure activities are expensive. A lot of people prefer going abroad because it's so much better value for money.

@cockandball I agree. Forgot how extortionate and unreliable public transport is

My bar of soap is neither cracked or dirty. Does make me wonder what you are doing with it to get in that state 🧼

But... some people don't have the luxury of even that choice. If it's value hoops from the food bank for the fifth night in a row, then washing and reflavouring would at the very least give you a (pitiful) sense of agency. Jack was talking to those people, and anyone who doesn't understand why should be able to extrapolate that they have therefore been lucky.

I agree, and I grow them. BUT people who are really struggling are not buying fresh spinach and rocket.

Cheap veg is much cheaper than growing it. The allotment itself is £30 a year. Mine easily pays for itself in luxury veg. Now - when I bought the plants years ago. But if I’m really looking at where every penny goes, I can’t afford a couple of quid a week going on asparagus, strawberries and blackcurrants. I need it for bread and milk.

There’s such a performative element to thrift. People can’t seem to just quietly get on with it. So many who aren’t on the breadline see things like ‘buy a slow cooker and be really organised about putting it on before work’ as actually helpful to someone living on beans on toast! It’s really not!

Any sort of baking or cooking from scratch is more expensive. Of course, the product is not remotely comparable, but that’s not the point, is it? People who need to save money are not usually buying the premium ranges, are they? Few people can’t make they leap between ‘need to save money=buy cheaper food’ Noone can make biscuits for 30p. It flipping costs that just to put the oven on!

I’ve never made my own chicken stock from a carcass because it’s cheaper. Does anybody? Just because it tastes so much nicer. And because I like to think of using as much as possible of my free range chook.

I am a silent observer in a 'scrimping' Facebook book. All posts, can be divided into three categories:

1. When will I get the £354/next £354 payment/£400 energy payment followed by dozens of usually wrong responses
2. People telling posters to cancel energy direct debits as they are for more than they are using (completely missing the point about building up credit for the winter and discount for paying by dd)
3. Posters saying 'just pay what you can afford. They can't do anything' Really poor advice.
4. And my favourite, tips to save energy, in no particular order and all absolutely true:

a) In warm weather, stand a, bucket of water outside and it will be hot enough to wash up with after dinner b) Use you car instead of an oven when the weather is hot c) Use numerous gadgets at the same time instead of turning on you oven. So one woman cooked a roast in a double air fryer and roasties and Yorkshires in another double af, used an electric steamer for veg and cooked gravy and stuffing in two slow cookers! And was congratulated on saving energy. c) Sitting in the dark or using outside solar lights indoors 4) Turning off fridges and freezers overnight 5) Running three freezers to stockpile food to 'save money' 6) washing up to save on running the dishwasher and washing clothes in the bath to save on running the washing machine

Yes, I don't like the taste of my own stock either or the process of making it, no-one else is such a gourmand that they would notice the difference and I really like the taste of stock cubes/stock pots etc in stuff anyway plus it's right pain in the arse to store/freeze with a small freezer, we hardly eat any meat anyway, DD1 is veggie, at this time of year I'm not making soup/stew unless it's gazpacho so it would go to waste, stock cubes/stockpots are really cheap anyway in Aldi (69p for four stock pots, <50p for stock cubes) and last years until you need them. Plus I've been buying a chicken crown/chicken breast anyway as no-one except me likes leg meat and DDs don't even eat chicken.

No holidays in £5k/week cottages for me! Until very recently I was on £248/week for 3 of us paying out of that £105 rent! So yeh, making a fucking chicken last 10 meals and boiling the damned carcass twice was not some MC game of frugality!

This^

And the poster who remarked that nice food is a morale booster in hard times not slop from the slop menu made from the slop jockey cook book.

I also agree with the poster who remarked thrift is for those who have a choice. People on the bread line do not have that choice.

But you can't wash your hair in the bath?

Oh and one day I would like to see a thread like this not descend into arguing about how to make chicken stock vs stock cubes are cheaper.

Completely agree with this. We’ve shopped online with Sainsburys for years, but over a few weeks I decided to do an equivalent shop in Asda, Aldi and Lidl to see the price difference.

It was really minimal, like £1-2 difference each time, and our local Aldi and Lidl both seem to have some stock issues so we ended up having to drive to another supermarket to pick up final bits.

Just not worth the extra time and fuel to ‘save’ around £2. That’s including the delivery cost with Sainsburys too.

I turn the shower off while I'm putting conditioner on my hair and soap on my body. Then put it on again to rinse everything off. Also I don't leave it running for ages before getting in. It saves a lot of water.

Really? I find it hard to spend less than £180 in Sainsbury's or Tesco for the same shop that is £130 in Aldi. It saves us thousands of pounds a year.

We are flat broke at the moment, which has coincided with my daughter having a beans on toast phase. I thank my lucky stars every day for it. I dread the day when she declares she never wants to see another baked beans (which must surely come!) and remembers she likes chicken nuggets (in my better-off days I made them from chicken breast for her, so that’s what she’s used to). I’m praying it will at least be spag bol, which is just about manageable!

I can do tasty, nourishing meals for 20 p. But they are Asian meals which won't appeal to anyone.

Everyone.

But you can't wash your hair in the bath?

You can. You absolutely can and I've done it.

Bath tub full of plain warm water. Get in, lean back and get your hair wet. Wash hair with shampoo. Lean back and dunk your hair in the bath water to rinse the suds out. Then stay in the bath for a bit longer to let the shampoo suds wash you or stand up. Wash with soap/shower gel. Back in the bath water to rinse. Just splash the bath water over you once you're back in the bath so that your freshly washed hair does not go in the bathwater. Get out of bath. Easy.

I guess we must be buying different things.

Plus I found many fresh products were unreliable in Sainsbury's and Tesco and were unusable before their best before date. That was actually the main reason I switched to Aldi and Lidl before I noticed the price difference, I was wasting so much. They have a smaller stock and much better stock control.

That it's always cheaper to switch insurance every year. Yes always double check when you get your renewal quote but often (particularly with my car insurance) my current one is still the cheapest. Also as a pp said some things (wi fi!) are such a faff to change that its often easier just to stick with the same provider for the sake of saving 2 quid a month.

Also disagree that it's always better to buy quality once. Posters on here are obsessed with the "sam vines boots theory" and,ok, there might be some occasions when it's better to pay a bit more for something that will last longer but realistically it's not always worth it.

Boots (and clothes!) are, ironically, a good example. I doubt I would actually get 15x as much use out of a £250 nice quality pair of leather boots than a cheapo £20 primark pair that just last one winter. Some parts will always wear down and need replacing on the "good" pair, and the chances that the same pair will still fit, be vaguely fashionable, and suitable for purpose for a decade plus is VERY unlikely. If I'd listened to the advice and spent a fortune on buying an expensive "classic" capsule work wardrobe in 2019 it would have been a complete waste of money given weight changes, change in fashion, and the fact I now wfh!

Garam Masala is ok in a porridge, but onion would be a bit much for me.

I would not recommend any attempt at home made reusable toilet tissues.

One that jumped out at me from a thread a while ago: don’t use the shower, wash yourself from a bucket with a flannel. It’ll be a day of absolute desperation before I’d be doing that.

Wash your hair in the bath and use a bowl filled with water from the tap to rinse it. Done.
Or in the past we would wash it in the bathroom sink. Fill sink dunk in hair lather rinse in water. refill sink a couple of times and use a plastic cup or similar to rinse over head.
This seemed to make your hair extra silky - something to do with tipping your head upside down and so giving the underneath hair a good wash and rinse.

Adding lentils to meals. I'd rather starve than eat those bloody things.

Re chicken stock from a carcass, one thing I never remember to do is to keep one in the freezer, wait till I have another, and do 2 together. Well broken up, obviously, to fit in the pan without too much extra water. But a more concentrated stock at the end of it.